130 IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY

tele is a self-selected minority with special characteristics; it
includes many of the “culturally alert” people of the com-
munity. More than that, the potential clientele today—that
part of the adult community which might reasonably be ex-
pected to use the public library—is by no means equivalent to
the total membership of the community. Particularly the edu-
cational levels of the population limit the size of the library
clientele. A plausible argument can be made that under present
conditions the public library clientele 7zust be small and
that the library should be organized for those relatively few
people in the community who can make “serious”’ use of li-

brary materials.

‘No one institution or agency in the community today at-
tracts the majority of the population, and certainly no cul-
tural institution comes close to doing so. It may well be that
the proper role of the public library is deliberately and con-
sciously to serve the “serious” and “culturally alert” members
of the community rather than attempt now to reach all the
people. This approach to the problem of planning the course
of the public library within the coming years is strength-
ened by this review of the research literature, which clearly
demonstrates that universality of public library service is
practically impossible for the public library at the present
time, regardless of the aggressiveness of the library in pro-
moting itself. It may be, therefore, that the librarian should
explicitly redefine his goal from attempting to serve the total
community to providing the minority of “serious” users of
books and seekers for information with the tools which they
need.? Perhaps his selection of materials, his technical pro-
cedures, his promotional activities should be concentrated on
this select group—and his gratifications too. This would call

*Present library users are better-educated than book readers generally, ac-
cording to a national survey (SRC, 1948). Of the book readers who do not
use the public library, 48 percent have completed high school, as against 79
percent of the book readers who use the nublic library.